Method and system for asymmetric satellite communications for local area networks

Abstract

A method and system for providing high-speed, satellite-based information delivery is described. Improved communication channel efficiency is accomplished by employing an asymmetric data flow. The high bandwidth channel capacity of digital satellite systems is used for the download of large volumes of data. While relatively low speed communication channels are used for upstream data requests. The use of separate channels for upstream data and downloaded data provides an increased efficiency of use for typical internet and other electronic information service subscribers. A typical user in such systems generally makes relatively short information requests. These requests are then followed by large amounts of information being transferred to the user's computer in response to the request. The volume of data being downloaded often causes a capacity overload of typically used land lines. This invention solves this problem, without becoming prohibitively expensive, by employing digital satellite dish receivers to receive the high volume of downloaded data and using the relatively low speed communication channels low volume upstream requests. Moreover, this invention is designed to interface with all common communication devices as well as being designed to operate on and with all common computing platforms.

Description

Reference to Microfiche Appendix. A microfiche appendix, containing 3 microfiche and 150 total frames is filed herewith. The microfiche appendix includes the computer source code of one preferred embodiment of the invention. In other embodiments of the invention, the inventive concept may be implemented in other computer code, in dedicated electronic hardware, in a combination of these, or otherwise. This software appendix is hereby incorporated in this application in its entirety and is to be considered to be part of the disclosure of this specification.I. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTIONA. Field of the InventionThis invention relates to methods and systems for communications between computers and other digital information devices. More particularly, this invention relates to communications between computers making use of digital satellite communications channels and computer local area networks, to provide access to the internet, to facilitate data and software distribution, and / or to ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

This invention is a method and system for efficiently communicating between networked computers using a high speed satellite communications channel. It is an object of this invention to provide a high speed satellite based information delivery system for local area network connectivity to the internet, for file, data, software, and / or multimedia distribution.

It is a further object of this invention to provide a data transmission system particularly well suited to remote location and / or locations where access to high speed data mediums is unavailable or prohibitively expensive.

It is a further object of this invention to provide a high speed data transmission system that makes use of digital satellite communications technology to enhance data bandwidth, channel reliability, and accessability.

It is another object of this invention to provide a method for permitting many client computer systems, which may be operating system independent and operating on one or more local area networks, to communicate over a single satellite dish, at very high data rates.

Problems solved by technology

However, such a system encounters may problems, including slow transmission speeds, high access costs, lack of available wire lines, and internet congestion.

However, typical satellite links have required expensive hardware both to transmit and to receive data.

The expense of the hardware has made the use of satellite communication channels generally unavailable to those who most need it.

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